Sylvain Guintoli and Michael van der Mark worked hard with their Pata Honda crews on the opening day of the ninth-round World Superbike championship at Laguna Seca in the USA today, with Guintoli setting the tenth fastest time.

Provisional pole position was taken by Chaz Davies, as French ace Guintoli, who ended this morning’s opening Free Practice in seventh place, put his Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade SP a second behind the British rider’s time.

Van der Mark is visiting the USA and Laguna Seca for the first time and was deeply impressed by his initial laps of the 3.61km circuit, which included his first encounter with the infamous Corkscrew.

The Dutchman made steady progress learning the demanding circuit and ended day one in 14th place, but is confident of further improvement in tomorrow’s third Free Practice session ahead of Superpole, which will determine grid positions for Sunday’s two 25-lap races.



Sylvain Guintoli - P10, 1m24.742s

We’re still working hard in all areas to improve the CBR package and the lap times were consistent this afternoon, which is positive. I was also held up on each of my fast laps, so my ideal time is quite a bit faster than what we currently have. But we’re still missing some speed so we need to spend some time on the data tonight to understand where we can gain some time. There is not any particular part of the track or aspect of the bike that’s causing issues, it’s an overall thing that’s costing us a tenth or a tenth-and-a-half in each sector, but we’ll keep working hard to improve it.

Michael van der Mark - P14, 1m25.636s

It’s just amazing to ride this track. I’ve looked forward to it for a long time and the first couple of laps certainly impressed me. Riding down the Corkscrew for the first time, was… well, I can’t really use the words I want to, but it was incredible! I really enjoyed riding the track today but we still need to keep working on the bike, step-by-step, to improve the time. I hope tomorrow we can make a big step, because we need it, but I’m learning my way round here and I’m loving it.

Pieter Breddels - technical co-ordinator

Michael’s coming from Supersport so he’s new to this track and learning it is not easy. To do that while trying to find a setting is even more difficult and we’re working particularly on the front end of the bike and trying to improve grip levels. Sylvain started quite well this morning but from that point we could only improve the lap time by a few tenths. We tried a few things, including different gearing options, but we’ll take the good from this morning and the good from this afternoon and aim to move forward tomorrow.